TRO | Spotify Says Its Best Developers Haven't Written Code Since December thanks to AI

Here’s why this matters: This is the clearest indication yet that AI-assisted development has crossed from experiment to operating model at scale. Spotify isn’t a startup testing a thesis – it’s a US$100b+ public company with 675 million users telling investors its top engineers now supervise rather than write code. The key enabler isn’t Claude Code alone; it’s six years of infrastructure investment in Backstage, Spotify’s internal developer portal, which gave AI the scaffolding it needed to be productive. For TMT leaders, the lesson is clear: organisations that have invested in data and internal tooling are the ones best positioned to capture the AI productivity dividend. The role of the senior engineer is being redefined – from artisan coder to AI-augmented architect – and the companies that embrace this shift will ship faster than those still debating it.

Here’s why this matters: The emergence of two competing AI content marketplaces from the world’s largest cloud providers marks a turning point for the media industry’s relationship with Gen AI. Until now, publishers have been caught between suing AI companies for scraping and signing one-off licensing deals at opaque valuations. A marketplace model – particularly one with usage-based pricing – gives publishers a scalable revenue stream that grows with AI adoption rather than being locked into flat fees. For media and entertainment leaders, this creates genuine strategic optionality: wait for Amazon’s platform, commit to Microsoft’s, or negotiate individually at potentially less favourable rates. The bigger signal is that content provenance and licensing are becoming core infrastructure layers in the AI stack, not afterthoughts. This reinforces one the Meliora position on Media being, at its core, human connection through shared experience.

Here’s why this matters: By pushing to 2027, Ive and Altman are betting that the underlying models and agentic capabilities will be materially better by launch, giving the device a fighting chance of delivering on the promise of a “screen-free” computing paradigm. The 40–50 million unit production target signals serious commercial ambition – so we need to consider that in the next 12 months we will see a new distribution channel delivered through AI-native devices rather than iterative smartphone upgrades.

Meliora Associate Spotlight

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